Introduction
DO NOT SHOW THIS PORTFOLIO IN CLASS
The Top 2000 is an annual Dutch marathon radio program, that plays the 2,000 most popular songs of all time determined by a public vote. The highest ranking songs do not vary much from year to year but there sometimes new songs. I am interested in if these new songs are similar to older high ranking songs compared to other popular songs from the same year.
The new top 2000 songs probably have more focus on instruments compared to other hit songs from the same years.
As for the corpus I will be using a playlist of the 50 newest songs from the top 2000 and comparing to the spotify Dutch top 50 playlist.
The following graphs will compare the distribution of certain variables between the playlists.
Visualization
Classification of top 2000 and top 50
Feature importance
Tempogram of Danny Vera - Rollercoaster
The tempogram of rollercoaster is very unclear, the song primarily features a guitar melody and vocals. Tempograms seem to be more unclear on songs with these characteristics.
Tempogram of Nathan Evans - Wellerman (Sea Shanty / 220 KID x Billen Ted Remix)
The tempogram of wellerman is very clear, the tempo is very constant throughout the song. This is also the case for more songs in the top 50, the tempograms are clearer than most of the new songs from the top 2000.
Structure of #1 songs of top 50 and top 2000
The keygrams are less suited for showing the difference between these songs, spotify seperates wellerman in 5 sections making it difficult to deduce differences with such big intervals between the columns. Rollercoaster shows that the keys do not change a lot throughout the song. Wellerman starts in B-flat major in the first section but the rest of the sections are not clear. Different distance methods also did not result to more visible patterns.
Structure of #1 songs of top 50 and top 2000
The differences between the songs are also visible on the self similairity matrices. Rollercoaster results in a much more uniform plot, while the Sea Shanty, has yellow lines at around 30 and 80 seconds. This correlates when you listen to the songs, Sea Shanty can be classified as an EDM song with “drops”. These drops result in a drastic change in timbre, rollercoaster is a pop song with more gradual timbre changes. Looking at the pitches, it is the same case the drops also result in big changes in pitch.
Chromagram of #1 song of top 2000
The chromagram shows that the song is written in the A pitch class. There is no overlap visible between the pitch classes. The melody is not clearly visible as the song is quite long with a short melody.